"Zak Zayson." He flutters his arms and waves jazz hands about, popping his shoulder at the same time. "I like how it zings in the mouth."
"You like lots of things that zing in your mouth," someone pipes up.
"That's what he said," Zak says with a laugh.
I can't help but join in the laughter. I glance behind me to see if Josh and the music crew are laughing too.
They're not.
Okay, so I guess Josh was right all those years ago. The actors and the musicians are sworn mortal enemies, on opposite sides of the 38th parallel. And I guess I'm on the other side of the line now.
Josh doesn't seem upset by that. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say he was happy to have that divide. I look again, to see him laughing at something the person next to him said. And that's when it hits me—why he looks so different. It's not the hair. It's not that his face changed as we aged. It's that he never smiles around me. I don't get to see those straight white teeth or the dimples that emerge just below the corners of his mouth as it's stretched into his trademark shit-eating grin.
I haven't even seen his shit-eating grin since I left him ten years ago.
My first instinct is to drop my head and cry, but we all know I never let myself cry. Just because Iwantto is no reason to actually do it. Instead, I try to focus on what I'm doing, right here, right now, to prevent that massive dive down into a deep, dark place inside my brain.
"I'm on the fence about a stage name," I confess, forcing myself to be present with the people at my table. "My name is, like, really terrible for a ballerina."
Jasmine shrugs. "Leslie isn't so bad. And with Leslie Odom, Jr. hitting it big, it's probably making a comeback."
"Yeah, it's the last name. Moose." I see everyone wince. "Right? I know."
"So change it."
If it was only that simple. My grandfather actually did change his last name when he moved to England to play rugby. His original last name was quite Fijian: Kaukauabulumakau. Yeah, try fitting that on the back of a jersey. The meaning was "strong cow," and his nickname quickly became Moose. When he went pro, he officially changed it. And since he, as well as my father, are legends in the rugby world, Moose it is.
On some level, I know it's just a name and one by any other would smell as sweet or whatever—but perhaps sound better. I've even thought about doing some sort of anagram of the original family name—there are certainly enough letters—but I can't bring myself to pull the trigger.
"Maybe keep it," Amy offers. "Maybe it'll make you memorable. Like I once went to a plastic surgeon whose name was Dr. Hacker. He was good, but man, I was a little terrified going in."
"Yeah, but there are always the comments about my weight and stuff because I'm not built like a typical ballerina." People can be cruel. Especially in the ballet world. Although truth be told, it wasn't even the other students as much as the parents. No one wanted to see their precious daughter upstaged by someone who looked like me.
"People are dicks," Levi says. "Trust me, sister, we know. We all know. We're like the Island of Misfit Toys here, but we're here together."
And sitting here, eating—actually eating—with these kindred spirits, for the first time in my life, I'm starting to wonder if I've been focusing on the wrong thing all along.
Maybe there's more to life than being the best?
Chapter 10: Josh
Images of Leslie dance through my brain.
Lying in bed at night, I should not be having fantasies about her. I should not be thinking about how she's in this same building, or how easy it would be to ask her if she wants to come to my room.
Hell, we wouldn't even have to sneak around like we did at camp. No worries about being caught or having our parents called. It certainly did kick up the adrenaline a notch, not like we needed any more rushing hormones.
I wonder how Mei made out with the Hamptons gig this weekend. I should probably think about her more than I do. I force myself to try and remember what she felt like.
I'm drawing a blank. When I was seeing her for gigs every weekend, or even a few times a week, it seemed like a good thing. I haven't seen her since I came up here the first week in May.
It's now the third week in June.
That doesn't bode well for our relationship.
I should probably call it off officially. Not that I need to be free for any other entanglements or anything.
Still, I open my Instagram page and type her name in the search bar. And there she is. Skimpy white bikini, mason jar cocktail in hand. "Happy in the Hamptons!" it reads, followed by more hashtags than should probably be legal. I swipe to the next picture in the series. There are about six with her in various poses. Number seven though …
